


The Shape of Ourselves

by Liitohauki



Series: Lost and Loved [3]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, And Eating It Raw, Animal Death, Gen, Graphic Description of Skinning a Bird, Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, Jötunn Loki, Shapeshifting, raised on Jötunheim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 03:13:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3675261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liitohauki/pseuds/Liitohauki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tide after the twelfth anniversary of the Asgardian Invasion, Nál takes her child wandering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shape of Ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> Second installment of "Loki gets adopted by a jötunn witch who robs corpses and lives in a cave". This one's several years down the line. For context, Loki's about the equivalent of a nine- or ten-year-old child.
> 
> If you hover the cursor over the Finnish text, an English translation should pop up. All the translations are also available in the end notes.

A tide after the twelfth anniversary of the Asgardian Invasion, Nál takes her child wandering.

She wakes earlier than usual to perform her tasks, and to prepare a satchel for the trip. In it, she places two bowls, some smoked hallaporo meat, a jar of laverbread, a small round of cheese, a container of kelp hardtack, a sealed pot filled with what’s left of last tide's stew, and a skin of fermented milk.

When Loki wakes, she sends her off with a list of duties far shorter than usual. Loki makes no comment, but when she returns from filling the troughs there’s a spring to her step that betrays her. Once she’s done with her chores, Nál instructs her to pack for hunting. She does so, and they leave before the first moon has risen beyond the lowest peak of the mountains.

The sky is clear and bright, and fresh snow scrunches underfoot as they follow a mountain trail leading up to a rock formation Nál likes to call Bergelmir’s Palm - it’s a wide, round ledge with five pillars of stone jutting from its edges like fingers. There’s a cliff near the Palm, its face carved full of caverns by the kalli that nest there.

Loki chatters on throughout the journey, telling Nál of the tricks she’s been teaching the vargs and showing her a colorful rock she found near the caverns and asking her again and again and _again_ what they’ll be doing. Nál isn’t even sure she really wants an answer. Loki seems to have made a game of how many different ways she can come up with to ask a single question, and Nál’s participation isn’t truly required.

Once they reach the Palm, Nál sets her satchel aside and picks up a small stone. She pricks her thumb so she can paint sigils for accuracy and force onto it, and then stands still as she waits for the perfect target.

“Okei, penikka,” she says to Loki, “nyt tarkkana.”

The stone hits just off target and shatters against the cliff face. Loki nearly falls over from the force of her laughter. Nál scowls as she bends over to pick up another stone, muttering “sietämätön pikku äpärä” under her breath.

Loki laughs on.

It takes her four tries to hit a kalli hard enough to stun it. Loki jeers at every attempt, but on the fourth she stops insulting her mother's eye sight and throwing arm long enough to dart in and grab the kalli before it can recover and fly off. She holds its wings down in a firm yet gentle grip as she carries it to Nál.

Nál snaps its neck in one swift flick, clears a place for herself and then, pulling a knife from her belt, sits down to skin the bird. Loki sits down across from her, waiting for the lesson to begin.

“First thing to know,” Nál starts, “is that if you want to wear something’s skin, it’s got to die by your hand.” She cuts off the feet, sticks the knife in through the chest and slices a long line from breast to beak. Loki leans forward, eager to listen now that she knows what the lesson is about.

“The second thing to know,” Nál continues as she carefully cuts and pulls the kalli’s head from its covering, “is the less damaged the skin, the easier it’ll be to wear it.” She goes on to snap the bird’s shoulder bones with her thumb so she can separate the wings from the body. Loki is watching carefully.

She works the rest of the skin off in silence, cutting with care along the backbone as she pulls, until the whole thing is free from head to tail feathers. Then she makes a small nick on the inside of each wing and lays the skin out to dry on the stone. Loki’s expression is rapt. Nál smiles as she thinks of a way to sooth her wounded pride.

“And the third thing to know is, when you know what you’re doing” – she plucks off a single feather – “you won’t need a _skin_.”

She takes flight, wings beating a steady rhythm to lift her above Loki’s head as she flies over her, glides a lazy circle in the air and comes to perch on a low ledge. Loki follows, beside herself with amazement; Nál preens her feathers, allowing herself a moment to bask in her child’s adulation before landing back on the ground and discarding the feather.

“How did you do that, Amma?” Loki asks her, bouncing up and down on the soles of her feet in her excitement, “What did it feel like? Did it hurt? Was it hard to fly? Did you hafta think like a bird?”

Nál scoffs at the last question, giving the back of Loki’s head a light swat to dislodge such a silly thought. She heads back to the Palm at a brisk pace. Loki has to jog to stay abreast of her. “That’s preposterous!” Nál exclaims, “‘Think like a bird’… Bah! When you put on your leathers, do you need to think like a kilt before you can wear one?”

Loki hangs her head and mumbles, “Well, no…”

“Exactly! Answer me this, Loki: what are you?”

“A jötun?”

“No. You’re no more a jötun than you are a bird, Loki.”

“Then what am I?”

“Didn’t I just tell you? You’re Loki.”

It’s apparently an unsatisfactory answer; Loki stops, crosses her arms and looks up at her with a fierce scowl.

Nál sighs before crouching down and laying her hands on Loki’s shoulders. She looks into her eyes and tells her, “Listen well, child: you don’t become the skin, you _wear_ it. You may look like a crow, or a varg, or an otter, but inside you're still you. That never changes, no matter how many shapes you wear. Just like you don’t stop being you when you stop running around naked and put on some clothes.”

“Even this” – she gently squeezes Loki’s shoulders – “even the shape you were born to, is nothing more than a well-worn skin. It’s like your favorite kilt: you know it, every crease and stitch and patched up tear of it, and it feels so comfortable you hardly notice you’re wearing it. But in the end, it’s just a garment. And just like any garment, you can take it off if you want to.”

Nál lets go of Loki. She stands, hand coming to rest atop her child’s unruly curls.

“Who you are is Loki. _What_ you are is Loki. All there is, all that’s important to you, is Loki. Remember that, and you can wander where you please in any form you like.” She ruffles Loki’s hair and keeps walking. And when Loki falls into step beside her, she shortens her stride a little.

But just a little. The child needs to learn to keep up on her own.

Back at the Palm, Nál settles down to clean the rest of the bird while Loki works on killing her own. She fells one with her second stone, crowing about it as though it were a great accomplishment. Her knife is sharp and sure as she cuts at the skin of her kill, already well-practiced in the art of slaughter.

She is less practiced in the art of shifting, and however used she is to handling the blood and flesh of animals, the thought of putting on the bird’s feathers while they’re still fresh and bloody makes her scrunch her face in disgust at her mother. Nál laughs at this, saying, “If you want to wait until it’s dried…”

Of course, she doesn’t.

When Loki finally manages to soar, Nál can’t help but feel a curious itching at her throat. She swallows convulsively, watching her foundling glide alongside the cliff as though she was born for it, and thinks on what luck she has had on this tide. She cleans her bird, and Loki’s bird, and then sets both aside to go fly with her child.

After they tire, they sit side by side, feet dangling over the edge of the Palm, and eat. The meat is raw and cold, and the bones snap clearly and cleanly between their fingers. Loki gets a particular glint in her eye just before she smears offal all over her mother’s face, and Nál licks and bites at her hand to make her shriek in delight.

Once the birds are naught but blood smeared on their hands and mouths, Nál opens her satchel, and they both tear eagerly into the treats inside. At the end of it all, they wash their hands in snow and weave feathers in each other's hair while she tells Loki stories about the first wanderers and the ridiculous myths they inspired in those who didn’t know better. The moon is well over the mountains by the time they head down the trail.

For once, Loki’s so tired she can barely manage to speak, let alone stand on her own two feet. Nál carries her to the caves on her back. They wash up together, splashing water at each other in the frigid river that flows through the lower chambers. It invigorates Loki just enough that when she’s put to bed, she stays awake to plead, “Don’t leave yet.”

So Nál strokes her hair, and stays, and Loki falls asleep to the familiar tune of her mother humming the only hymn she knows by heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Things to keep in mind, though they're not really all that important: in this series, jötnar age at a different rate than humans. Also, jötnar measure time according to tides and their years are longer than ours, so "twelfth anniversary" doesn't actually mean twelve years ago as we understand it.
> 
> Finnish to English:
> 
> "Okei, penikka, nyt tarkkana." = "Alright, cub, now watch."
> 
> "sietämätön pikku äpärä" = "intolerable little bastard"
> 
> "Kalli" is a made-up word for a made-up bird. I basically just wanted something that sounded like "kallio" (cliff, rock) and "alli" (long-tailed duck). Although Google does tell me that "kalli" is also the genitive conjugation of the word "hug" in Estonian.


End file.
